MudMan

@MudMan@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't think an outright ban would be acceptable at all or grounded in any kind of proportionality. It's one thing to use gambling as a guilt-by-association thing, but if gambling isn't outright illegal even in that somewhat fallacious interpretation an outright ban would be absurd.

  Which is something I feel a lot of the people rallying against this practice often didn't think through, but hey.

  I still disagree with your interpretation of that literature review.

  This systematic literature review analyzes 190 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2023, revealing nuanced findings. Regarding compliance, 41% of studies reported high compliance levels, 29% low compliance, and 29% inconclusive results. For effectiveness in achieving regulatory goals, 44% found self-regulation effective, 33% ineffective, and 24% inconclusive.

  Our review also finds that the presence of intermediaries such as industry associations, third-party auditors, and NGOs, along with certain types of state involvement, tends to enhance self-regulation outcomes.

  That's less "it's a crapshoot" and more "it generally works, especially if there is an overisght body".

  Which in this case there absolutely is, given that this all slots into pre-existing age ratings and content warnings. Your misgivings don't line up with the data you provide and don't line up with pre-existing analogous self-regulation.

  I've seen nothing to suggest this is any more problematic than either other types of monetization or other types of content restriction, and the big differentiator between violent/sexual content and this seems to be whether the segment of the userbase that posts online likes it as a matter of creative opinion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  OK, if you want to play it like that, let me start by challenging a couple of assumptions.

  First, the relevance of linking loot boxes to problem gambling. Ultimately gambling is not illegal, so this doesn't inherently suggest that the situation demands new legislation. The worst case scenario here is loot boxes are made analogous to gambling, which is presumably already as regulated as it's going to get on each territory. There's a lot more to question there, as there was on all the frankly sloppy analysis on the links of gaming to violence in the 90s, but there is an implication at the core of the attempt to link them in the first place that I don't think is justified.

  Second, I dispute the need for them being on the wane predating your gate for legislation. For one thing, you're not being explicit about when "regulation" by your definition starts. By the way you've sourced it you can arbitrarily choose any point in time. For another, it makes sense that regulation and self-regulation would happen in parallel. Ultimately bad PR and negative research motivates both public and private action. Again I refer to the 90s violent game panic. If the probes on gaming violence motivated the creation of age ratings agencies for gaming, does that mean the age ratings weren't enough of a mitigation and they should have deployed anti-violence legislation? I'm going to pretty strongly argue that's not the case.

  Also, I feel you're misrepresenting the metastudy you provide on the results of self regulation. High compliance/high effectiveness is the biggest segment on all counts. Granted, on roughly half of the studies, but a lot more studies find self-regulation to work than not, by that metric. Why is "a small but replicable correlation" such a concern but a majority of studies finding self-regulation is highly effective a mixed result you don't trust? Seems to me you're not treating all the references you're using the same way.

  FWIW, I find this conversation not particularly productive because, frankly, with these things the literature gets to be a huge mess. Again, my reference is the 90s violence campaigns, where so many terrible papers were being funded and published the academic conversation became entirely impractical. The fact is gaming did need some age ratings standard and it made sense for national agencies to exist to manage them. And it makes sense for those same agencies to have explicit policies not just on loot boxes, but on all in-game monetization. The industry needs best practices and safeguards. And the public, incidentally, needs a LOT more awareness of why self-declaring age in accounts is important and what safeguards are already in place as it is, because there is a ton of parental control and underage protection that kicks in but nobody is particularly aware of.

  But instead gamers whose concern with loot boxes is primarily artistic have been rooting for overreach in hopes the result is games they like more. I find that risky and problematic, and the idea of Brazil's government passing wide-ranging age verfication regulation and having English-speaking media and social media report on it based on a mostly reasonable mandate of loot box games carrying an 18+ rating more concerning than any of the underlying issues being addressed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, no, it can be a report of the authors of the study, but if they don't publish the study I don't know what they're talking about. I didn't poke around much, because if all my security is blocking content and blaring warnings it's probably not a great idea, but at a glance in the direct link I didn't find a link to the contents of the report proper.

  To your question, it wouldn't change whether loot boxes are gambling, in that my position is that they are not regardless. It also wouldn't change whether they're worth regulating, in that my position is age ratings agencies should have a policy about it, but that's about it.

  But in practical and political terms that's not what originated the panic in the first place, so whether the presence of loot boxes is growing or shrinking does go towards whether the PR impact of abusive practices and self-regulation is sufficient to address the issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That site raises so many flags on my security software, but I went ahead and opened it elsewhere and... can't find a source. What is "a recent study"? 2024? 2020? Do you have a primary source?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And we do if you try to buy porn in a bookstore. We still don't like upending the entire framework of the Internet for the sake of replicating that online. Which is exactly what's happening here. The loot box thing is an afterthought that mandates a specific age rating for games that include them and nothing else. Porn is the main focus of the legislation.

  And I disagree on implementing internet-wide ID checks for the sake of keeping kids away from porn. Hard.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Less than what?

  Who is still doing loot boxes? Valve, for sure, they still have them on CounterStrike, sports games and then... what? Hearthstone/Magic and that type of CCG stuff and... I guess mobile gacha RPGs?

  Everybody else is doing battle passes now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So is alcohol and I will have a beer regardless of what you or anybody else thinks about it. Screw you, you don't get to baby my addictions, I'm a big boy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Super hard disagree. I do like me some Magic the Gathering and CCGs in general. If anything I'm say more concerned with the increasing trend of real world blind pack collectibles aimed exclusively at kids than I am with online loot boxes, which is something most of the industry has abandoned anyway after the panic went viral.

  But nope, absolutely not. Loot boxes aren't worth forcing online age verification any more than porn was a few months ago when we were all mad because the UK did it. And absolutely no, I am an adult and if I want to gamble online, let alone buy loot boxes in a videogame, I absolutely should be happy to do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeeeeah, you're way less down on age verification on principle than I do.

  You're also more down on loot boxes than I am, in that I still dispute the equivalence to gambling. It's not absurd, but it requires ignoring a lot of nuance.

  Still, the problem I have with this situation in general is that the loot box element (which isn't that heavy, it mostly establishes by law that loot boxes will make a game be automatically listed as 18 and up) is masking the mandatory age verification element. And the mandatory age verification is baaaad. It effectively does the magical wishful tech thinking thing we've been seeing recently elsewhere where it just... says it should be private and comply with privacy regulations but doesn't explain how that's possible, while at the same time demanding that every single store and service provider both design a perfect age verification system AND somehow magic up an API to share that information with each game while remaining entirely private. Which is pretty much impossible.

  But nobody is talking about that, everybody just wants to dunk on loot boxes. Like four years too late, because most of the industry saw the writing on the wall and moved on to battle passes instead on the PR hit alone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wrote a first response referencing the one mention I had found of loot boxes, but you are correct, I missed that they did include one in the definitions section.

  IV – caixa de recompensa: funcionalidade disponível em certos jogos eletrônicos que permite a aquisição, mediante pagamento, pelo jogador, de itens virtuais consumíveis ou de vantagens aleatórias, resgatáveis pelo jogador ou usuário, sem conhecimento prévio de seu conteúdo ou garantia de sua efetiva utilidade;

  So yeah, you are right, they do define it as paid. Carry on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Art. 20. São vedadas as caixas de recompensa (loot boxes) oferecidas em jogos eletrônicos direcionados a crianças e a adolescentes ou de acesso provável por eles, nos termos da respectiva classificação indicativa.

  Not as far as I can tell. This translates to "Loot boxes offered in electronic games aimed at children and teenagers or likely to be accessed by them, in the terms of the corresponding age rating".

  You can argue that "offered" here specifically implies "offered for purchase", but... I mean, my Brazilian Portuguese isn't perfect, but I don't think that's explicitly the case, the word means what you think it means in English. It'd be a problem of hermeneutics at that point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For those protections to have any effect in Brazil, however, they'll necessitate the usage of age-verification mechanisms. Previously, Brazilian law had considered it sufficient for users of digital services to self-declare their age. The new law, however, requires the providers of those services to "take proportionate, auditable and technically secure measures to assess the age or age range of users."

  Seriously, read things before reacting to them.

  It's been decades of social media and centuries of press. How have we not learned about this as a society?

  I mean, if you're cool with this, then you're cool with this and we disagree, but I'm gonna say you probably were going out of the headline alone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Said this elsewhere, but it seems to me a bigger story that it also mandates age verification for 18 plus content, including porn and at the platform level.

  Steam needs to verify your age now if it wants to carry porn games.

  And I do have problems with loot boxes, in that it doesn't qualify the boxes having to be paid, so technically Diablo II should be a 18+ game, along with every single RPG in existence. I have to assume courts or downstream definitions will do a sanity check on that, because the law they passed makes zero qualifiers, it just says "loot boxes".

  So... maybe look into what they passed before being too celebratory about it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean... I own both a LCD and an OLED Deck.

  I would absolutely not use it as a computer without a dock and I certainly wouldn't use it as a media player.

  Other handhelds maaaaybe. The Legion Go has a stand and detachable controllers, so it could be a thing if it didn't have the worst speakers ever devised by a human being. The GPD Win 4, the GPD Win Mini, the Ayaneo Slide and the Aya Flip all have some semblance of a keyboard, so you can get away with some stuff you can't on the Deck or the Ally. I don't think they make sense as a main computing device for the money, though, as they don't have even the Deck's low entry point as an excuse.

  FWIW, the optical nub on the Win 4 is the best pointer device in any of these, and even with that and the physical keyboard I still wouldn't use it to replace a laptop for media consumption if given the option. If I had a single device I could pick up I would sooner look into the ASUS Flow line of convertibles than into any current handheld, although you can certainly get a much cheaper all-rounder laptop than that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool, so you really really wanted a handheld.

  Which is fine. Go nuts. Love me a handheld.

  But "the best all rounder" it definitely is not. There is a big difference between needing a dock, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse versus just a mouse for fundamentally the same experience. If you're into the ergonomics of a separate monitor then you're looking for something else than "an all rounder", you're looking for a desktop replacement specifically. That's not the same thing. And then I'd say the Deck still wouldn't be how I fix that problem, honestly.

  Also, FWIW, I don't think the Deck is particularly good at anything that is not gaming. The 800p screen is not good enough for media consumption, specially given that the thing has no easy way to handle it other than gripping it with both hands. No stand, no easy way to one-hand it, tiny screen... Yeah, not how you want to watch a movie. Especially not on the LCD model, which is the only one under 500.

  I agree that it's a good cheap PC handheld. I don't think it's anything but that, though. If it's the only device you can afford I genuinely don't think it makes much sense, and in almost every other circumstance either spending more on a better desktop/laptop or splitting your budget between a cheaper work PC and a Deck is a better solution.

  I think if you're considering a Deck or a console it's a different conversation, but as your main computing device? Yeah, no, not a recommendation from me at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That's a bad use case, honestly. I mean, sure, you can do it, but... why?

  The deck starts at 400 bucks (yeah, I know there's a sale now, that's not the base price). And it comes with 256 Gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM. You need a keyboard, mouse, monitor and dock to use it as a desktop PC, and now... well, it's a desktop PC, you can't move that set up with you to do anything other than play games.

  What you want is... you know, a laptop. If you want some gaming ASUS will throw in a dedicated GPU for the price of all that loose hardware. And, you know, your keyboard and monitor can go in your backpack instead of being locked to a desk.

  It's fine if you really really want a handheld and your other tasks are a secondary concern, but if you can only afford one cheap device and you want an all-rounder to do both desktop replacement and on-the-go entertainment you want a laptop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You went for an Intel handheld? I salute you, sir, that's a deep cut.

  As one of the five people on the planet who owns an Intel GPU I firmly believe we are in a very exclusive club that will one day do wonders for hardware archaeology.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure. Maybe? The Deck isn't that expensive, and despite being relatively limited runs it definitely has some benefits from scale. For one it's a custom APU, so you have to assume there's a specific deal with AMD.

  Valve is certainly a first party that benefits from software sales primarily, so it makes sense for them to go to some lengths to invest in bringing people over, but I'm not sure that they are actively subsidizing the Deck, the price seems pretty reasonable. I'm sure they don't make a ton of money from it, though, so they definitely get to thin those margins up a LOT compared with the pure hardware manufacturers, let alone with the tiny companies making handhelds one at a time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I choose to read that as a genuine compliment.

  And yeah, man, these weird devices are being sold to weird people who like them for what they are. Which also means when the next weird thing comes out those weirdos are likely to get upsold and resell older stuff. All of these things are going to be fantastic Youtube videos from retro hardware people in the 2070s, assuming we avoid going full Mad Max Idiocracy that long.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I find this train of thought weird, because these are all niche devices.

  It's strange to hear that there's no demographic for boutique handhelds at the same time any mention that the Switch sold an order of magnitude more than the Deck gets a dozen responses that the Deck is "experimental" or "a first try" or "not competing directly".

  And hey, all that's true. The Deck will never move 150 million consoles or sell 5 million in a week. There's value in limited run hardware that does things that aren't mainstream propositions alongside the "let's get every kid to get one of these from their grandma" devices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is just... not true?

  The Deck ranges from 420 to 680. The Legion Go S is 520, right in the middle of that. The Z1 Extreme ROG Ally is 670, right in line with the top of the line Deck (and noticeably more powerful). The Switch 2 is 470, on the cheaper side and also a fair bit beefier.

  This article is arguing that having next-gen chips in boutique devices for 1K is a) a new development, and b) a bad thing. It is neither.

  Before the Deck went mass market with PC handhelds they would routinely be a lot more expensive. The original Ayaneo was between 800 and 900 in 2021. The Pro model went up to 1200.

  I want those things to exist. I want GPD to cram a Strix Halo into a handheld with a removable battery. I want Ayaneo to build a dual screen clamshell. I want them to make a dumb console that spits out its buttons so you can flip them around. I want vertical handhelds. All that kooky weirdness is experimenting with new form factors and parts in ways that will move the segment forward. Without Ayaneo, Odin or GPD being dumb enough to cram a laptop into a handheld there'd be no Steam Deck in the first place.

  Let the people who like weird hardware dump a grand or two into those weird things and that's how you eventually get a comfortably priced for-the-rest-of-us thing from Valve or Asus that takes the ideas from those that work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Game] Hollow Knight: Silksong is now Steam Deck Verified⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also day one on GOG, for anybody interested.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Imperfect, Linux-powered, DIY smart TV is the embodiment of ad fatigue⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeeeeah, I was gonna say. There are easier, nicer looking ways to drive your media consumption through a computing device on a TV. Hell, there are very nice vertical mounts for laptops that look good as a showpiece, no need to strap the thing to the back of the TV.

  But hey, it's a kid doing a hobby project. It's a fun thing to do. I support it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you download your game on SD OLED?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It's good that people have provided workarounds, but it IS kinda nuts that this hasn't been solved yet. It's been an issue since day one, it's not like it makes much sense to leave any version of the Deck with the screen on and full power consumption just so it can download scheduled patches or big games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft open sources MS-DOS 4.0⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Making it open source seems to me like the solution to that problem, not the cause. If there is a vulnerability in DOS 6.22 people probably know about it by now. If you're using it for something critical you probably would have an easier time patching it with full access.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft open sources MS-DOS 4.0⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, the two relevant questions there are: A) is it?, and B) so what?

  It's not like you're not allowed to provide paid support for a piece of open source software.

  At this point I'm not sure what portion of the difference between 4 and 6.22 is relevant or unknown. That's a pretty well explored platform. I guess this way FreeDOS stays relevant a bit longer? Maybe? It's not like it isn't trivial to pull a copy of 6.22. It was trivial when it was new.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft open sources MS-DOS 4.0⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, alternatives exist. But they can be... how would one put it? Relatively rare and expensive.

  I am aware of single board industrial replacement alternatives, but those can be hard to get a hold of, depending on location. Shopping around for used, older thin clients that still have the right I/O and compatible-enough hardware is honestly not a terrible idea, although weirdly the video that you sent as an example highlights a bunch of caveats and issues I wouldn't even have thought about. Still, that one may be a fun project, if slightly not in the spirit, certainly off-spec for the period and definitely not plug-and-play.

  Ultimately, though, I do see the appeal of a period-approrpiate, native revival device. Clearly not alone there, hence the OP and the viral success of the Hand, with all its limitations. I'm not saying you can't work around the need for that exact thing. You can and I have. To repeat what my first response to the guy was:

  "It's not like there aren't ways to get there now, they're just... relatively rare and quite expensive."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft open sources MS-DOS 4.0⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  ...

  A MS DOS thin client?

  I assumed the guy wanted to run DOS natively, otherwise open source MS DOS definitely isn't a requirement, you can just run DOSBOX on any cheap ARM SBC. But looking at the conversation you're having below maybe they just didn't think about that?

  But hey, if you have links to new small form factor 386s for under 100 bucks please do share, I'd be super curious to get one. VGA out is strongly preferred. If I was going to live with nonsense digital output scaling issues I'd just use the MiSTer I already have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft open sources MS-DOS 4.0⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, you're pointing people at the Hand 386 below. You clearly know what I'm talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft open sources MS-DOS 4.0⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm all for that idea, but I don't think what's holding it back is the OS. It's not like there aren't ways to get there now, they're just... relatively rare and quite expensive.